Sunday, April 4, 2010

Zapping the Bigots

Has anyone else been following the antics of a nasty bunch called the Westboro Baptist Church? They've made themselves obnoxious by showing up at soldiers' funerals and waving signs that insult the dead, call for more dead soldiers, pray for the downfall of America because we actually tolerate (gasp!) Gays, and other such fun stuff.

It just so happens that I've got a solution. For a couple years now I've had a book up on Amazon.com; go there and Search for "Offensive As Hell: The Joys of Jesus-Freak Bagging" -- which should be an easy title to remember. It's a collection of merry tales that friends have told me about dealing with pushy bigots like these. Take if for a book of tactics (it's cheap!), use, and enjoy. Bon appetit!

6 comments:

Leslie, while your idea might have merit with most bigoted groups, it wouldn't with the phelps family (which makes up nearly all of his "church" membership). They do all their protesting to get attention.

And, as unfortunate as it sounds, I think the only way you would be able to get them to stop is by doing something so illegal I won't even mention it. And you'd have to shut them all up, even the grandchildren. Why? Because if you were able to pull something off which involved anything, the children would come after you because they're all attorneys.

Maybe it's time to call on some help from Mithra to send some justice down on their Topeka compound?

Michael's right. This family can call itself a "Baptist church", but it isn't affiliated with any Baptist denomination, and has no members outside the extended family. And the only way to combat them is to ignore them, and persuade everyone you can to do the same. If everyone ignored them they would go away. What's more, they make their living by provoking people into violence, and then suing them. I don't even believe they really believe in all they claim to; they just pick whatever will upset the most people and say it to them to provoke a reaction.

Oh, and by the way, like Lyndon LaRouche, their political affiliation is to the Democratic Party.

Hmmm, would it be possible to set the IRS on them? A really aggressive audit would be sure to show *something* off -- an 'i' not dotted, a 't' not crossed -- enough to freeze their assets off.

Better still, if there's anyone in Topeka who can pull it off: plant just a tiny amount of drugs-drugs in their so-called church, and call the DEA down on them. Wheee! Confiscation -- of everything they own. Lawyers or not, they'd have trouble getting out of that.

The absolutely best tactic that I have heard for combating them is to set up opposite their protest with a big AIDS fundraiser. You run it like a pledge walk. Every minute they keep protesting, money is going into the coffers of the local AIDS or LGBT service groups. Extra money will be paid if anyone crosses the road to get "up close and personal" with the counter-protest, with signs to inform them of the fact.

I understand this tactic shut down ol'Fred himself in under ten minutes at one protest. They used a counter that kept tallying up the amount of money raised for AIDS awareness as the minutes went by. The counter-protest did nothing else -- no yelling, no chanting. Just kept witness and kept the tally rolling.